Download iStat Menus for Mac

In the edit

Start with the Astronomy item. Version 7.50 adds forecasts for seeing, transparency and cloud cover — proper observing conditions, not just a moon phase. That sits alongside the usual menu bar stats: CPU load, GPU activity, memory usage with the top apps listed, disk read and write indicators with S.M.A.R.T. status, and network throughput.

Monitor CPU and GPU load without opening Activity Monitor

• Keeping an eye on CPU and GPU load without opening Activity Monitor.
• Checking disk usage and S.M.A.R.T. status before a big shoot.
• Reading temperature and fan speeds via the helper, which is included.

Runs on macOS 11 or later with over 30 language options

• Runs on macOS 11 or later, both Apple Silicon and Intel.
• The interface is localised in over 30 languages, including English, Russian, German, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
• Version 7.50 is the current release; the Astronomy item and observing forecasts are new.

A working day with it

Picture a Tuesday afternoon in a shared studio near Hackney Wick. You are editing a wedding gallery in Capture One while the second shooter is exporting selects to a NAS. The menu bar is where you notice things before they become problems.

You glance at the CPU item — a thin line graph showing the last minute of activity. Export is pegging two cores, but the rest sit quiet, so you keep culling. The network item shows a steady upload line: the NAS transfer is fine. No spikes, no drops.

Later, you step out for a coffee and leave the Mac asleep. When you come back, the temperature reading (enabled via the helper) tells you the fans spun up briefly while you were gone. You check the history graph, see the heat spike, and realise the export finished but the machine stayed warm in its bag. Next time you will leave the lid open.

The weather dropdown is open most of the day. You are scouting an outdoor ceremony for Saturday, and the cloud cover forecast helps you decide whether to bring a backup flash setup. The Astronomy item shows transparency for that evening — good for a golden-hour portrait you have planned.

Setting up a custom sensor panel for a render session

You have a long After Effects render queued overnight. Before you start it, you want a clean view of what matters without the full menu bar clutter. Here is the workflow.

1. Open iStat Menus preferences and go to the CPU section. Turn off every sub-item except the overall load percentage and the top processes list. You want to see which app is eating cycles without scrolling.
2. Go to the Memory section and enable the pie chart and the memory pressure indicator.
3. Set the Network section to show only the total bandwidth chart. You do not need per-app data overnight — just a flat line so you can see if something is unexpectedly uploading.
4. Enable the Disk section with read/write indicators. If the render is writing to an external SSD, you want to confirm the drive is active and not stalled.
5. Less noise, more signal.
6. Launch the render and minimise everything. The menu bar now shows CPU load, memory pressure, network throughput and disk activity. You check it once before you leave, see everything is stable, and walk away.

In the morning, the history graphs in each section confirm the render ran without a hitch. CPU hovered around 70 percent, memory stayed under pressure, disk wrote steadily until 3am, and the network was quiet. No need to open a log.

Astronomy item now shows seeing conditions and cloud cover in the menu bar

The Astronomy item is the headline. Before 7.50, you could see the moon phase in the weather dropdown, but that was it. Now the Astronomy item sits in the menu bar and shows seeing conditions, transparency and cloud cover alongside the moon phase. For anyone who shoots outdoors — portraits, events, landscape work — that is a small but real time-saver. You no longer open a separate weather app to check if the sky will cooperate.

The observing forecasts (seeing, transparency, cloud cover) are pulled from the same weather source, so they update at the same interval as the rest of the weather data.

Otherwise, version 7.50 behaves like the iStat Menus you already know. The same CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network and sensor sections, the same Dark Mode support, the same helper for temperature and fan readings. If you need the Astronomy item and the forecasts, you want the version from the developer, not the store.

For a photographer who edits on a Mac, the Astronomy item is the kind of addition that feels small until you use it. Then you wonder why it was not there before.

New this release

• New Astronomy item with forecasts for seeing, transparency and cloud cover.
• Observing conditions data added to the weather section.

Mac it needs

• macOS 11 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel processor